down to the wire
in 18 hours, i am scheduled to catch a plane to glasgow.
in 26 hours, i am scheduled to arrive, and then i have a couple of days to kill, checking out glasgow, adjusting to the time change, and finding my way to edinburgh, where i will be taking part in a two week summer school that will in some way interrelate with the annual Edinburgh Festival season.
i don’t actually know all that much yet about what i will be doing, but i am excited.
after the festival/school ends, i am aspiring to stay in the UK, making use of the six month work visa which i have acquired with the help of an organization called BUNAC, which i found in my research on how the hell i might be able to extend my stay in europe without accruing debt or resorting to criminal activity.
i Really don’t know what that will be like yet, so you’ll just have to check back later.
right now, i’m just thinking about packing, and the last minute errands i have to run. despite a three week travel cushion since leaving bloomington, which my infinite wisdom decided would be good for acquiring odds and ends, dealing with mail and bill forwarding, and deciding if i had forgotten anything, i still have something of a list for my last day:
- cash my deposit check and send a cashier’s check to david because he already sent me the money via paypal because that seemed the easiest way of depositing it in my bank account.
- also send david his harry potter tapes back
- take the other book on tape back to cracker barrel for my refund
- go to target to pay the balance on my target card because the online system is broken (blah)
- make use of my presence at target to pick up a few last minute medications and personal items, potentially including melatonin, which i have learned that many people swear by in order to ease jetlag
- finally buy a new camera
- hopefully buy the power converter and adapter(s) that was one of the many victims of my “i thought i would buy this on the internet but then i realized that i wouldn’t really have an address for a month” syndrome
- call the city of bloomington to thank them for my recent jury duty summons, and apologize for the fact that i will be out of the country for an indeterminate amount of time, which will make sitting in their waiting room all day a bit difficult. what timing, eh?
so now i should probably get a little sleep.
i’ll let you know if i dream about kilts or anything.
August 10th, 2006 at 6:02 am
If you want to do some exploring while you are there, maybe you could live out my long-time fantasy vacation to Scotland and try to find the town of Isbister up north around the Orkneys. My birth name is Isbister, and the family apparently came over to country fleeing Scotland after some brothers murdered a duke or earl or something. Two remained in Canada; one went back (and possibly was executed). I come from the east Canadian brother. Isbister (or Ysbister) means fisherman, or some such.
Also, anything you can bring back on the Stone of Destiny would be appreciated. There is a very cool story about a few Glasgow students who stole it back from the Westminster Cathedral in the 1950s and had Scotland Yard on the run over the holiday break. Xeroxes of student papers, interviews with old emeritus profs who may have been students at the time, photos of the campus, whatever … MUCH appreciated.
gl. have fun.
August 10th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
Hope the liquid terrorism thing doesn’t screw you up.